Beware of Facebook Scams

We have posted before about being wary of social media scams, and would like to give you some updated information on how to be reactive, as well as proactive. While a current popular Facebook scam involves receiving free flights through Southwest airlines, this isn’t the only one to be cautious of! Faulty links are scattered throughout the popular social network, so it is crucial to beware of promises that seem “too good to be true”. Clicking on one of these gives the application access to your account. The power of scams on Facebook is that it can easily spread to all your friends. Many will post spam comments on your friends’ walls, and if they click it, the cycle continues.

If anyone posts these on your wall, your best bet is to delete them immediately. You may also want to let your friend know that their account security has been compromised. If you have clicked the link and are spamming your friends, you need to remove the application’s access to your account. This can be done under Account—Privacy Settings—Apps and Websites. Hover over the faulty app, click the pencil that is displayed, and you will be able to remove the application. (In the Southwest Airlines case, the faulty app is called Travel Inn.) It is also a good idea to delete all the spam comments posted from your account.

For future reference, be extra careful when granting applications permission to access your Facebook account, in order to protect the accounts of you and your friends.

Social Media and Your Business

Want to start or enhance your company’s presence on social media sites? Do you know which sites are most popular and/or interactive? Where is customer engagement generated the most? Mashable has released results found by Postling, and analyzed thousands of users to gain some insight. Here are some statistics you may find interesting:

• 78% of small businesses use Twitter and 75% use Facebook

• It is recommended that you use both Twitter and Facebook. Twitter allows for engagement within a community, but Facebook drives more traffic to your site.

• Twitter accounts for 50% of the commentary left for small businesses, showing that this network accounts for half of business-customer interaction.

• 62% of small business post 8+ times a week, and generate an average of 10.27 comments per day

• 24% of small businesses post 1-7 times a week, and generate an average of 0.33 comments per day

• 14% of small businesses post less than once a week, and only generate an average of 0.02 comments per day

• When comparing small business accounts to personal accounts, they receive 5.40 comments per day as opposed to 3.67 comments per day, respectively

Click here to read the full set of statistics.

Keep Your Office Productive Even When Your Employees Are Stuck at Home!

This winter left the nation buried under snow and many businesses were effected because their employees physically couldn't get to work. However, inclement weather, disasters, and other disruptions do not have to negatively impact your productivity just because of these reasons.

Here are 5 Tips to Keeping Your Business Productive:

1. Virtual Private Networking (VPN)
Virtual Private Networking allows you to connect to your home PC to the company intranet as a secure node. VPN gives you access to Outlook, Citrix, and terminal servers and allows you to run certain applications remotely.

2. Active Remote Desktop Capabilities
Remote desktop applications such as LogMeIn deliver your work desktop to your home PC. It allows you to run programs and view files on that machine as if you were sitting right in front of your work PC. This solution is simple and secure and has several benefits. It provides remote access for employees who work in the field or travel frequently.
But what if your office loses power? You can't remotely log onto a machine that doesn't have electricity...

3. Offsite backup
When your office loses power, maintaining productivity depends on having access to critical files. As an alternative to installing an onsite generator, having an offsite backup of your files in place will give you access to your data even when the lights go out. Such a system allows you to access an archived copy of your files that's stored at an offsite location (normally a data center with its own generators and redundant Internet connections,) which you should have any way for purposes of data backups.

4. Emergency access to email
An email archiving system such as CMIT's RADAR (Rapid Archiving, Discovery and Recovery) has the additional ability to act as an emergency email system if your email server goes offline. An email archiving solution stores a copy of all emails and allows for fast searchability, and as an added bonus, the email going to the archive doesn't stop even if your email server loses power. Since many of us still depend on email, a searchable archive provides redundancy of this key communication tool in a cost-effective manner.

5. Implement an emergency texting service
In the case of a disaster like hurricane or flood, having an emergency texting service in place allows you to broadcast message to your employees even if no one has access to email. Cellular networks tend to stay online even when other infrastructures experience disruption, and mobile phones run on batteries, which makes this a solid solution for communicating during extreme weather conditions.

The key for all these tools, however, is having them in place and tested before disaster strikes.

These tools also provide your business with multiple benefits in terms of cost savings, improvements to efficiency, data security, and system monitoring that continue to provide substantial ROI even when the snow has long since melted.

Be Aware of Phishing Scams During Tax Season

It is important to be wary of any emails claiming to be from the IRS, as tax season is upon us. Hackers can easily take advantage of this time period and send out various phishing scams. The common message from the IRS says that “Your Federal Tax Payment has been rejected”. There is an attachment to the message, that when opened, contains a file that will immediately infect your computer. We discussed the same email here, but want you to keep in mind that the messages may appear less suspicious during tax season.

The malware is at times, difficult to detect, which is why it is important to take precautionary measures and stay informed. Most of America is expecting to hear whether their tax return has been accepted/rejected via email within the next few months, which makes all computer users more vulnerable. Stay alert of all your emails and remember that the IRS will not send you a file attachment with your email. If you are skeptical about a message you received, contact the IRS directly to find out any information.

5 Reasons to Use CRM Software

"CRM" -- Customer Relationship Management

Not too long ago, using CRM software only made sense for large enterprises due to cost, but not anymore. Even if you have a sales force of one, a CRM tracking tool offers several benefits, typically at a very reasonable price. In addition to managing sales, CRM software has applications for customer service. Providers of CRM software include Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, ACT and Microsoft Dynamics, among others.

Consider using CRM software if you want to:

1. Organize and manage your sales process efficiently (instead of having it all in your head)

2. Get more out of your existing leads (instead of forgetting to make that follow up call)

3. Stay on the same page with team members (instead of passing an excel spreadsheet around)

4. Better forecast and plan (instead of thinking, "Where did that sticky note go?")

5. Create a sales process that's repeatable (instead of only one person having the formula)

We are all guilty of not using technology to better ourselves and to grow our business. And many of us could enhance our sales techniques, as well, so join Lisa Earle McLeod, author of Triangle of Truth, for a FREE one-hour webinar on Selling for Small Business Owners. The webinar takes place February 24th at 2pm Eastern, 1pm Central, 12pm Mountain and 11am Pacific. She'll discuss all aspects of selling, from sales calls to sales managemnt to choosing and using the right customer relations management (CRM) software to boost efficiency and profits. See you on the 24th!

Click here to Register for this FREE webinar!

Keep Your Information Private on the Web

Most people are suprised when they learn that private information is in all actuality, public. For example, if someone searches for your phone number on the web, they wouldn't normally stumble across information such as how much you paid in property taxes last year. However, things are changing with the proliferation of so-called "data aggregator" or "data broker" websites in the last year or two. These websites increasingly reveal more and more data about you that you want to keep private.

One of the main aggregator is Spokeo.com. Spokeo allows users to perform a basic search by simply typing in a name, email address, or phone number. Even on the free level, the search results gives information about that person's gender, approximate age, relationship status, approximate home value, and hobbies. Users who sign up for the paid version of Spokeo get access to information that might include a person's approximate income level, religion, IP addresses, ethnicity, and even the names of the other people in the household.

There is a positive side to this website in that you can opt out of Spokeo. Visit Spokeo Privacy and you'll find simple instructions on how to get your name off this site.

However, this only removes your information from this website alone, not other aggregators. After all, Spokeo didn't hack into your computer to get that info. The company either found it in a public database or got it from another data broker.

Are Cyber Attacks Targeting You!?

New reports show that small businesses are the new target for Cyber attacks.

It is becoming easier and easier for people to build their own attacks that are readily available on websites that include toolkits to set them up. Hackers target small businesses because they know that they have more in their bank account than the average consumer. Therefore the attackers look to wipe out these bank accounts with more than one method. To read more on the methods of these attacks and see how you can avoid these Cyber attacks, click here to read the full article:
Cyber Attacks: Targeting Your Business?

Free Anti-Virus Programs -- Worth the Price?

The question is, "Why do I need to purchase a security suite for my business PCs if I run a free anti-virus program on my home PC and never have any infections?"

If you never had an infection at home, you're very lucky. And relying on "luck" isn't a promising security model.

Take into consideration what you are risking:

• Free anti-virus programs only address one aspect of computer security. They DO NOT manage your firewall, filter spam, or alert you to a suspicious website you might be trying to access.


• What's on your work computer? Sensitive correspondence? Financial records? Customer credit card numbers -- the dissemination of which might be traced back to you?


• If a virus wiped clean every hard drive in your office, how long and at what cost would it take you to restore the missing data?
  

Clearly, these are the worst-case scenarios, but unfortunately, they're not unheard of. Read more from this article for a long list of sorrows that can befall a compromised PC.

A properly configured security suite actively checks the files on your system for virus-like behavior, identifying threats and quarantining suspicious files before they inflict any damage. The firewall component seals your office network away from the rest of the Internet, ensuring that only authorized traffic, both inbound and outbound, makes it through. Finally, a consolidated suite provides a single, comprehensive portal for administering all facets of system security instead of having to administereach application separately, as you would have to do with a patchwork system of free applications.

The good news about a security suite is that it doesn't have to be expensive! In fact, considering the alternative, many of them are downright cheap. There is a wide range of options from which to choose depending on your needs, your budget, and your plans for future growth. Contact your local CMIT Solutions office for more detals and information. We can help you figure out the best solution for you by assessing your office and keeping in mind your budget.

It is in your best interest to not wait for a security breach to find out how much a free anti-virus program really costs.